Archive for February 10, 2011

Thursday: Which Pratchett story has vampires, werewolves, and animated shopping carts?

Reaper Man. The Dead Rights association includes a zombie (Reg Shoe) vampires (the Winkings) a boogeyman (Scheppel) a banshee with a speech impediment (Ixolite) a ghoul (Drull) and a werewolf (or rather a wereman—Lupine) as an honorary member. Ludmilla is also a werewolf. The animated shopping carts? They’re an intermediate form of something that resembles a shopping mall in its mature form. Congratulations to Lyn Thorne-Alder, who nailed this one right off.

Friday: “A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that has learned how to read.” – Pratchett. What book?

Guards! Guards! Often the most delightful parts of Pratchett are his footnotes. This one reads: “The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”

Saturday: “Humanity’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.” – Pratchett. What book?

Witches Abroad. The quote refers to Greebo, Nanny Ogg’s cat, who was briefly turned into a human being with Greebo’s nature, as he returns to his usual one-eyed tomcat self.

Men at Arms. The Gonne (unlike guns on our world?) keeps whispering into the brain of anyone who touches it. Usually “pull the trigger.”

Monday: “Gold and muck come out of the same shaft.” – Pratchett. Context and book?

The Fifth Elephant. Angua the werewolf to Carrot after Vimes has killed her brother, who tried to attack him:

“That might happen to me. Have you ever thought about that? He was my brother, after all. Being two things at the same time, and never quite being one … we’re not the most stable of creatures …”

“Gold and muck come out of the same shaft,” said Carrot.

“Well … if it happened … if it did … would you do what Vimes did? Carrot? Would it be you who picked up a weapon and came after me?”

Tuesday: “Paranoids only think someone is out to get them. Wizards know it.” – Pratchett. Context?

Sourcery. In the early Discword books there is, to put it mildly, a great deal of competition among the wizards at Unseen University. In fact, the only way to rise in the hierarchy is to murder those higher up, thus the quote. Once Ridcully takes over, between this book and Reaper Man, this aspect of life at Unseen University seems to disappear.

Wednesday: “For Zhaim, having power and not using it was a form of weakness. And the weak neither survived nor deserved to.” Bowling. Context?

Homecoming. Zhaim is rationalizing, as usual. He’s the villain of Homecoming, but he himself sees his actions as acceptable, even noble. (Not a spoiler, as the first scene shows him as a torturer through the eyes of one of his victims. He thinks he’s a misunderstood artist in human flesh.)